Salmon House

Primed to receive the biggest tax refund in years. This "found money" will be put to use on the exterior of my housal unit -- I intend on having my windows replaced (not by me), but I will also repair rotting wood, install gutter guards, caulk the siding, weatherseal and paint the exterior myself. A set of big projects for 2011.

We will return the color of the housal unit to its original color scheme. No, it won't be salmon, or blue, or baby-shit yellow or any of those cartoonish colors many neighbors of mine prefer. Fortunately for me, these neighbors don't live right next door.

I'm glad I don't live next to a salmon house. Same with a blue house with a red door, or some other awful, garish coloring. I am happy my close-in neighbors have kept to schemes that "fit in" with the others. To me, this is important. While some people have the option to live alone, or rather, isolated, the great majority must live cooperatively. We ought to not speed through our own neighborhoods, or allow our dogs to bark incessantly, or hold a yard sale every weekend. There are limits and I'm not just referring to those that can be enforced by law, but those that are enforced by respect for the common good.

Recall my argument against Beth Shalom in San Francisco:

...how it fails to respect existing architecture. The same thing applies to a "custom" 3,400 sq ft housal unit built amongst existing 1,450 sq ft units but in the most desirable neighborhood. What's lost in all this is that the neighborhood is desirable for a reason. When reason is not respected, desirability wanes.

As Elk Grove continues to follow the same blueprint for low density sprawl as every other city in the U.S., the blueprint calls for minimum setback requirements, how high the fence can be, how wide the curb cuts into the shopping plaza must be -- it tells us what we can't do more than what we can, but more importantly, it doesn't tell us what ought to be done. The results are sterile, lifeless, auto-brutalized "communities" with no meaningful destinations. There is more to urban planning than just following rules, but clearly this applies not to Elk Grove.

My housal unit will fit in with the others following my exterior upgrades. I intend to preserve what little sense of "charm" this neighborhood possesses by not attempting to turn Laguna Springs into a cartoon caricature of a meaningful place to live.

Buy China

After six years the rubber on the squeegee has deteriorated. Bought a new one today. Made in China.

The wiper blade I had bought earlier this season was Chinese made, and it was awful. However, I was conducting an experiment to see how the driver's side (China, $4.89) compared to the passenger's side (Bosch - Belgium, $11.89). The new one today was made in Belgium, and it works fantastic. It will [likely] last a lot longer than the Chinese made blade, but it also costs a lot more. That's the paradox-- good stuff costs more but we live in a nation that is after the "lowest price, always," so we accept products that suck.

I am happy that at least I had a choice here. In most cases I don't have that choice -- I usually cannot buy good shit because retailers refuse to carry it as it doesn't sell. Gotta move that low-cost merchandise at high volume -- that's the only business model that seems to work these days.

So my Buy China program still had a customer today with the squeegee. I'm up to about $55 in Chinese made garbage this year, trying to spend my social security "refund." Rubber won't last long regardless, so come 2017 I'll be doing it again. Maybe that year will see a 2% payroll tax reduction, too.

I don't suppose you were aware that while us Americans were given a 2% payroll tax reduction, we lost our "Making Work Pay" credit, which [mostly] offsets the gain in the tax reduction. The only difference is that we get the reduction over time, during 2011, instead of waiting until 2012. We really stuck it to The Man, didn't we...

Humeville

An apt name for Elk Grove (courtesy of Elk Grove News.net), now renamed for the city council member most responsive to the needs of residential building developers, Mr. Pat Hume.

Humeville:

Which looks like every other -ville in this nation:

Single Use Zoning -- residents over here, strip retail over there, token light industrial over here, large format retail over there, office "parks" over here, schools over there...
Car Dependency -- and extreme dependency at that -- a four mile round trip by car for a pack of gum, a forty mile round trip by car to a job....
Jobless -- All jobs in one place, all living in another. Living within walking distance to an icky, icky office park is verboten.
Patchwork Quilt of Development -- A 45-unit development, followed by a half mile of dirt, followed by another 55-unit development...

Of course, the end-game of Elk Grove has already been determined -- as soon as the "newness" of Elk Grove fades, as soon as tree limbs go unpruned, leaves pile up in the gutters, gutters fall off the roof, roof shingles blow away, dead cars die in driveways, dry rot rots exteriors -- those with the means will pick up and drive away to the next "new" development. It may still be within Elk Grove proper, but will be even farther from everything.

I live in extreme North Elk Grove, only a few hundred yards from the City of Sacramento. It might as well be South Sacramento, because our housal units are beginning to show object signs of deferred maintenance that is the hallmark of aging suburbia and a hallmark of South Sacramento -- people who don't give a shit about where they live. They don't have any attachment, no roots so-to-speak, no sense of community that would motivate them to take care of their properties. They do the minimum and focus on NASCAR, on commuting to the Bay Area for weekend visits to the relatives, on grinding out solo-occupant commutes to work.

Humeville is destined to suffer from crushing traffic from all its diseased, non-active exclusively-motorized residents, property booms and busts much more volatile than would otherwise occur, and a constituency who have never learned and never will learn the value of community.

Means Test -- Part I

I have a feeling that when it comes time from my generation to draw social security (should it really be capitalized?), it will be means tested. If I have substantial assets, savings, what have you, I'll be told to go to the back of the line. This is one reason I said that I'll Buy China this year with my 2% social security "windfall." If I save it for retirement it will only work to reduce my future social security retirement benefit...so my thinking goes.

This seems entirely plausible to me, means testing, or whatever you want to call "if you have stuff, you don't need it." It seems plausible because we are doing this today, just in different forms. Today, new hires into government/civil service/railroad/what-have-you will get a third the pension benefits bestowed upon the earlier entrants.

I intend on writing off all my twenty four years of contributions into social security, which will be forty years by the time I retire. I see it as nothing more than an additional 6.2% tax, that's all. This is regressive taxation, for as I save for my own retirement it will be used against me to fund the retirements of those who never did save or those who couldn't save. I indeed support our regressive tax structure, so this isn't anything different, is it? If I'm willing to accept that the marginal tax rate above, say $300,000 be higher than the first $300,000, why should it be any different regarding social security?

And if I decide to go out and spend my entire retirement in one year on Viagra, hookers and blow, then I can qualify for payments, because then I'll be needy.

Writing off future social security payments, "because I'm goddamn entitled to my own money, that's why!" isn't going to be tolerated by most Americans. The problem is that we think that once we pay taxes it's still...somehow...ours. Uh-uh. Nope. It ain't ours as soon as it's withheld. This flawed thinking shows up in myriad places:

"As a matter of fact I do own the road"
"California only gets $0.60 back from every $1.00 in federal taxes paid."
"I paid into unemployment insurance, I ought to get all that back."
"Don't ask what you can do for your country / Ask what your country can do for you."

We have to move away from the idea that everyone is entitled to their slice of that social security pie, and just because our government decided to assign mutual and exclusive claims to the same piece of pie we can't accept that it may not be available for us. We don't want to be the last one standing in the game of musical social security chairs. So -- real reform eludes us, and will continue to elude us, and consequently we will someday get to watch the whole housal unit of cards come crashing down because all of us continue to resist any change that might reduce our share.

We won't voluntarily do it. But why should we volunteer? Just because I write it off doesn't mean I'm volunteering it away No! I mean that I ain't gonna get it, that simple. Nothing will be available to me as everyone before me couldn't accept the idea that "I paid into it, it's my share" only works if your share hadn't earlier been fuckered away by our government for multiple wars, automobile maker bailouts, shovel-ready transportation projects, endless unemployment checks, homeland security, imported oil, Medicare Part D, on and on and on and on. It will be extinguished by the time I retire.

We want the services our government provides but we are unwilling to pay for them.

Buy China

Not a few weeks into twenty eleven and my Buy China program is a roaring success. I elected to spend my 2% social security relief windfall on imported Chinese shit this year.

At the Orchard Supply Hardware store the other day I was after a new 14 gauge extension cord, something to replace my fraying 12 gauge cord that had provided me nearly 20 years of service.

That it lasted 20 years tells me one thing -- it wasn't made in China. But, I had no option to replace it with another US made cord, because OSH doesn't sell any that aren't made in China. So, my Buy China program had its first customer as I proudly walked out of the store with a product proudly made in Hangzhou. My head was held high, my chest was puffed out -- I didn't realize how liberating that feeling could be...I felt good for the first time in days.

The cord now hangs with care in my housal unit's garage, after it performed admirably during its first deployment to power the edger for the front yard. The yard is clean and crisp, the cord worked wonderfully, and I feel particularly good about not having had to pay a bloated American wage to a manufacturing wage earner to produce it.

Of course, these good feelings won't last. The cord won't last more than five years, at which point I will get to repeat the Buy China program -- I will make sure that I won't keep American workers employed by recycling rubber -- no, I will toss this cord deep into the trash so it can never be reused. This way, Chinese workers will stay employed recycling their own rubber, converting these raw materials into an electrical cord to be shipped to Oakland and driven by tractor-trailer to the Elk Grove OSH store where I still won't have to pay an arm and a leg for it.

I think my little program is wonderful. Wouldn't you agree?

Do You See?

Overlooking Highway 99 at 41st Avenue on my bike, I stopped a few times last week and counted the number of southbound vehicles that passed below me per minute.

Interestingly, regardless of the apparent speed the number consistently ranges between 95 and 108 cars per minute. About 6,000 per hour, I'd wager. For some reason I had earlier assumed that as speed dropped, the total number would also drop, but indeed the spacing between them shortens and the overall volume is unchanged. Nonetheless, there comes an inflection point as the volume increases that traffic speed significantly falls off, something akin to voltage collapse on the electrical system, a point where the road can no longer support the number of cars wanting to use it. Gridlock.

The Sacramento Bee reported the other day how Sacramento drivers "suffer" through 24 hours a year in stalled or slowed traffic, compared to 28 hours at the height of the hallucinated economic boom. This represents a decrease in individual vehicular mobility, which, according to the right wing of America, is a goddamn right. Healthcare? No way. Unfettered personal access to the only real public domain we have left, the roadway? Absolutely.

The problem I see with this approach, something that we've been doing now for the past hundred years, is that there is no way a city the size of Sacramento can accommodate any more than a fraction of its citizens in this manner, yet we continue to widen bridges over the American River, create ever longer commutes by continuing expansive suburban sprawl out to the fringes of the county, or contemplate a 6-lane connectorized expressway around the east as if we could. As if we should.

We haven't learned that by adding lanes to relieve congestion we've only ever increased the number of lanes of congestion, to the degradation of public spaces and to our collective health, to the fragmentation of entire neighborhoods, and to the staggering cost to maintain this public infrastructure.

Remember when Howe Avenue was widened from two lanes in each direction to three? Do you see? Perhaps twenty years ago now and today there's more congestion than ever. There are diminishing returns to spending public funds to essentially give away to consumers. This is a subsidy, or an entitlement, or whatever you want to call it. It is not materially different from universal health care, or social security. Yet somehow we bitch and bitch and bitch and bitch and bitch about subsidizing public transit...a great way of allocating this valuable urban space that we essentially give away to car owners.

What I find interesting is how WalMart, Target, Cargil, and Tyson Foods all can enjoy equal access to these same free entitlements to promote private enterprise while they consume a far greater allocation of this free good than what they pay in corporate taxes. This is free enterprise? Bullshit.

Personally I advocate public policies that recognize that the allocation and apportioning of resources in the private sector be equally applied to our public sector. By public sector, I am referring to "free parking" and "free use of the roadway," two things Sacramento has spent ninety years misallocating via taxation. The public use of the Sacramento River's edge was fuckered away fifty years ago, allocated to I-5 for thru truckers from Seattle to Los Angeles, to Natomas commuters, to duck hunters. South Sacramento neighborhoods were filleted like a fresh salmon to accommodate the then new Elk Grovian suburban commuters and a second option for easy access to Oakland.

These policies would, very simply, charge the users the true cost of these free public goods. You get charged by bandwidth for Internet access, you get charged for the number of cellularized telephone calls you make -- market-based approaches somehow ought to apply to every facet of Republican/Conservative ideology for every area of our economy -- except for the free use of roads and the prosecution of wars to promote the unfettered use of imported energy.

Six thousand cars an hour pass underneath the 41st Avenue bridge on Highway 99 while each only directly pays for a fraction of the cost. If one of them, call him Frank, makes $75,000 a year and drives 22,000 miles commuting to and from Elk Grove while another woman, Claire, lives without a car in midtown and makes the same wage, both are taxed equally to confer unequal use of the public domain, both are taxed equally to shoulder the staggering cost of maintenance and expansion of these public facilities, yet both don't equally use it. In what other public arena does this sort of disparity exist?

• Does Claire not receive the same public benefit from taxation to support NASA, to question human existence in the universe?
• Does Claire not receive the same benefits from an educated populace?
• Does Frank not receive the same public safety benefits from dog catchers and firefighters?
• Would one not gain access to a national or state park while the other could?
  Are both not entitled to the same Social Security benefits they both equally paid into?
• Are both not equally less secure through the waging of multiple perpetual wars?
  Do each pay different street prices for purple kush due to our failing war on drugs?
• Are both not equally spied on, eavesdropped, or otherwise controlled and manipulated by agents of the Central State? (this is getting fun)
• Are both not equally held responsible for socialized private losses via trillion dollar bailouts engineered by the collusion between corporate cartels, financial power elites and the public political plutocracy?

Both Claire and Frank would pay the same to register the same car, pay the same entrance fee to walk on the same state beach, yet they both have the ability to opt-out -- to not use the beach, to not purchase a car. When it comes to wetlands preservation, one may disagree, indeed vehemently, that the allocation of such resources is misguided yet both are still conferred the same environmental benefit. When it comes to imported apples from Chile, one may disagree, indeed vehemently, that the allocation of roadway resources is misguided yet both are still conferred the same economic benefit of out-of-season fruit...if they both choose to consume it. However, one or both may choose to opt-out, to not buy the apple.

But as Claire opts not to use Highway 99 she is still asked to pay for Frank's extended use of it. The difference between wetlands preservation for a swamp she may never visit and a freeway she may never drive on is that there is no public benefit for a non-utilized freeway, unlike real, tangible public benefits for wetlands restoration. If you want to argue that road building creates jobs that can be treated as a social good, well, so would wetlands restoration. So would engineering spacecraft to fly astronauts to Mars.

The argument that national security is enhanced by a network of roads capable of delivering tanks and howitzers to areas where they'll be needed is woefully outdated.

If you want to counter my argument with "well then let's just go back to the horse and donkey, let's see how you like it then," (which is just the sort of mindless, exhausting, pedestrian commentary provided by the anonymous on non-moderated comment boards) where, exactly, have I advocated the elimination of roads? I'm only asking that users ought to directly pay for their use of the fucking things. Cars will exist -- in my view, they should be held equally to other users of the public realm, not in dominance.

More Of The Less

Friday afternoon seemed like the dawn of spring around here. My PV panels produced 8kWh as I rode the bicycle home in a t-shirt.

These two things (bicycles and photovoltaics) are the nexus of what this blog represents -- a critique of our energy use, and while I may seemingly deviate substantially from this, I believe that many of the social issues I critique can be either directly or indirectly linked to our energy use. That currently every level of government that represents me is deep in debt while following the two decade long borrowing fiesta by the consumers they represent, well, this culture helps to understand why we choose to remain ignorant on energy and why we import over half of it.

Nonetheless, I think bicycles and photovoltaics represent the two extremes of so-called environmentalism. One represents less of everything, while the other represents more of everything...while still seemingly trying to reach the same goalpost.

My PV installation:

• was born in the USA
• was designed locally (by me)
• was installed locally (by me)
• is operated and maintained by a US citizen (me)
• relies on insolation rather than importation
• decreases global insulation
• decreases natural gas consumption
• shields me from future utility rate increases
• is comprised of a network of complex inter-related components to function correctly
• will take sixteen straight years to pay for itself

Yet it doesn't come close, not anywhere close, to what a bike provides. I personally think my bike provides more of the things I'd like to see in our living arrangements:

• It will never become obsolete. Manufacturers would have to deviate from a half century of rim/tyre/bottom bracket standards to make this bike obsolete. I will never have to worry about revising its operating system to version 8.3.1.
• It is easily repaired. It doesn't have an in-dash nav system that'll break, antilock brakes with sixty components each, etc.
• It never costs more than a few hundred for even the most major of overhauls and if so would last for years afterwards.
• It doesn't take up 200 square feet of roof space to operate.
• It can fit with eleven others into the parking stall space of a single SUV.
• It requires substantially less asphalt and road maintenance to operate, and indeed doesn't even need any to operate.
• I never have to take it in for a $40 Bubble's wash and detail. Eight minutes with a faucet, a dab of soap in a bucket and a sponge.
• While the Elk Grove school district is concerned about the rising cost of health care for its staff and administrators, a fleet of bicycles would assist many of those overweight educators to reduce their health care requirements.
• The health benefits from a $1,800 bike offsets the cost of a $18,000,000 computerized hospital billing system ten thousand times over.
• A bike doesn't require $900 in advertising overhead to sell each one.
• It can take you down any road but also any single-track trail or down a mountain side.
• With my panniers I can still carry home my CSA box of vegetables, or two Mickey's forties...sometimes even flowers.
• No Iraqis died to fuel my bike.
• It is accessible to nearly everyone while not everyone can drive a car. There are few unable to ride, as many Europeans ride well into their eighties.
• There aren't 42,000 bicyclist deaths each year in the US, nor the medical overhead of a half million injury accidents. If you crash, you very likely will agonize for some time, but you can pull the grit out from the roadrash and ride on.
• A flat tire doesn't require the services of a mobile nationwide association fleet just because you are unwilling to get your hands dirty changing out an icky, icky tire.
• You can avoid the dire warnings of conservative pundits on your car's AM radio about how our nation is turning to liquid shit. No, you can see it directly for yourself by observing the driving habits of those around you while on a bike, as your neighborhood streets become NASCAR ovals, as irate impatient assholes honk to move faster through the turn lane, make illegal u-turns to save a nickel on a gallon of gas, bypass stacked traffic down the bicycle lanes, on and on. By bicycling you become a better, more responsible driver.
• You won't likely kill anyone else but yourself with even the most irresponsible behavior -- riding while drunk, stoned, on Oxycontin, or with low blood sugar.
• The Big Three bicycle manufacturers wouldn't need a half trillion taxpayer bailout because their sales fell below eleven million units per year.
• We'd save a few hundred billion on the growing type II diabetes epidemic via lowered insulin use and increased sensitivity.
• Tens of millions of subsistence class people who barely scrape by having to dole out $7,500 per year for automobile maintenance, fuel, insurance, licensing and registration just to commute to work could find other ways to blow that dwindling wage.
• A bicycle doesn't require a smog certificate, state registration and licensing, or mandatory liability insurance before you even get on the damn thing.

It's not all roses, however:

• You can still run out of gas -- it still takes energy but at least it's your energy. You don't have to drive your car to a $40/month gym to expend energy that you're admonished to do a few times a week anyway.
• You can still die due to motorized vehicles -- but with some awareness and training and riding on the right side of the fucking road you substantially reduce your chances of injury/death, and the more people who bike the fewer cars there will be to mow you down.
• It's not all-weather -- but you don't have to waste fuel idling for 7 minutes to defrost the window and you can ride in fog, light rain, and into the wind quite comfortably with modest preparation.

I think the bike represents the best of human achievements and culture (except for all those arrogant racing pricks). It represents less of everything, while our economic structure is based on more cars and, simply, more of everything:

• more debt
• more consumption
• more energy
• more war
• more healthcare and less health
• more technology (smart grids, 4G, CAT scanners, boysenberries, ThinkPads, 3D tvs)
• more imported poorly made Chinese consumables
• more driving to farther out suburban sprawl
• more productive job losses
• more services in support of a dwindling productive job base
• more financial services in support of a dwindling productive job base (fees, surcharges, derivatives, CDOs, REITs, credit default swaps, insurance requirements)
• more taxation
• more entitlement programs for "incapable" Americans
• more drones
• more 3,200 sq ft Garage Majals
• more anger towards non-Christians
• more roads, freeway interchanges, and bridges
• more mindless reality based entertainment featuring overindulgent wealthy socialites
• more something-for-nothing charades (Indian casinos, A Minute To Win It, who wants to be a millionaire)
• more share of total wealth for the top 2%
• more processed corn and soybean foodstuffs by multinational agribusiness
• more productivity by fewer workers and greater corporate returns for shareholders

The bike doesn't need or require very much of any of these things. You can avoid an hour of televised reality programming by bicycling for that same hour...while being in the present, in the now, by controlling your own actions, by breathing hard and working those quads, by remaining aware of your surroundings. It's personally liberating and it can be productive if you ride to work or the store. It is substantially less intensive than photovoltaics...yet by no means am I advocating a world without cars or electricity. To counter my arguments by suggesting this is nothing more than mindless, polarizing claptrap, but unfortunately this is mainly what we get these days. Shit like "You environmental wackos want to return us to the stone age," or "Liberalism is a mental disorder," or "Anthropomorphic global warming is a myth." I have my opinions, yes, but they are well founded and thoughtfully presented...with just a hint of sarcasm...


I simply advocate less of the more and more of the less.

Bring Something To Think About

In the interests of the world, for all the children, for the environment and humanity in general, I carpooled with a co-worker to the Elk Grove bulk substation yesterday morning. It's relatively close to both our homes housal units, so he agreed to pick me up and off we were to the substation.

We drove down Franklin Blvd. southbound at roughly 7:40AM. Not too bad, as Elk Grove has no jobs of its own and no one is headed southbound that time of morning. Nonetheless, I offered a warning -- don't turn east on Whitelock Parkway. Find another way to the Elk Grove 230kV substation.

He screwed up. He turned east on Whitelock instead of heading south towards Bilby, which resulted in a full half hour delay trying to navigate through the morass of vehicular units dropping kids off at both Franklin High School and Pinkerton Middle School.

I sat in the passenger's seat but had a lively conversation with my co-worker. I wondered what all those other single occupant drivers do as they are trying to motor through south Elk Grove, what they think about while they waste a half hour each day just trying to get from their housal unit driveway to the on-ramp to I-5, then to face a daily 185-mile commute to Milpitas to work in a software lab or some shit like that. Do these people bring something to think about while spending two to three hours a day in a vehicular unit?

This is the life they want so that their kids can attend the nearly-all-white Franklin High/Liz Pinkerton schools. I mean that exactly as I've stated it. Neighbors around me have clearly indicated to me how they'd prefer their children to attend schools whose kids look like them. It's absolutely clear. My co-worker, in the confines of his own truck, has no difficulty telling me how he hates that nigger in the white house. Racism is alive and well in Elk Grove -- it never went away. It takes on various forms -- economic segregation, educational segregation, different political ideologies...

Tell me -- how many minorities attend Christian Brothers High School, deep in the heart of Black/Hispanic/Asian South Sacramento? Virtually none. Economic/educational segregation is not limited to the non-pious, it's everywhere. White Christian mothers refuse to have their children attend a school comprised of 30% "other," with children of people who look like "the help."

I'm not going to blog how I'm above any of this. I'm a white guy who's just as interested in living in an environment with others who look like me -- actually, those who act/behave like me. However, I don't think Obama's a goddamn nigger simply because I maintain a different political viewpoint. I like to think that I'm open about my own feelings, my own racism, and I admit it. I admit I maintain some degree of hesitancy, if that's the correct word, towards four shirtless black guys in a Dodge Neon while bicycling on Franklin Blvd.

I remember -- very vividly -- a black co-worker at WAPA who said he was petrified while working in San Francisco of entering an elevator with a single white woman. If this doesn't turn the stereotypical race issue on it's head, I don't know what would. I doubt very many any of the white females I know would tell me that they'd feel comfortable in an elevator ride with a single black man. They wouldn't feel comfortable, OK, I can perhaps understand that...but they would probably never assume that the black guy wouldn't either.

Against my monologue on race I return to the suburban madness of the "new" Whitelock area of Elk Grove. This is a total fucking wasteland in my opinion -- auto dominant, geometries that only support the car, foreign-energy and foreign-consumable intensive, jobless (save for roadbuilding and teaching), culture-less, community-less -- yet tens of thousands of affluent, energy-ignorant people scramble for all this "newness."

For A Tankard Of Petrol

I rode the bike again today, both ways. I did so two other days this week as well. This morning I noticed the lowest price for a gallon of petrol -- $3.21/9, while this afternoon it had risen to $3.25/9...a staggering, job-killing, economy destroying four cent difference.

But I suppose you didn't know that on intersections where two or more gas stations exist at adjacent or opposite corners, people will commit traffic violations to get to the gas station with the cheapest price, for even so much as $0.01 difference. The posted price is that important.

Four cents per gallon for a tankard of petrol in my little Civic runs an extra fifty two cents. Had I filled the tank this morning vs. this afternoon (if I had to fill the tank) I'd be fifty cents richer.

What do you suppose I'd spend that on?

Maybe one tenth of a new 707 Headband clone, or 4.8 kWh of electricity, or if I was really a spendthrift, 1/24th of a nice dinner out with my wife. Nope, as a bicyclist I was able to avoid that job-killing, economy busting four cent increase. Suppose I had instead drove to work all week long, and filled the car every other week -- I would have to sacrifice a nice dinner out with my wife once every fifty two weeks.

One night out a year is what this petrol increase represents.

Tell me -- is that worth a hundred thousand assholes risking the lives of themselves and everyone else by making illegal turns to get to the corner with the cheapest gas?

This is the auto-centric, car-dominant world we live in.

Another Franklin Death

My second confirmed death was logged last night on Franklin Blvd., my blogs namesake. A man was killed as he was traveling southbound and crashed into a car that was northbound and turning west across on-coming traffic onto Creeks Edge.

I bicycle through this intersection twice daily. I am extremely wary at this particular intersection because cars turning west across Franklin only have to yield to southbound traffic -- they don't get a dedicated green light for turning. This has never made any sense to me, why traffic engineers decided to eliminate the dedicated turn that used to exist here. If it still existed this man would be alive this evening. I'll tell you, many, many people turning onto Creeks Edge never yield correctly -- I see it every damn day.


View Larger Map

Why do you suppose this formerly dedicated green turn was eliminated and converted into a yield? To improve speeds on Franklin I'd bet, so that southbounders wouldn't have to be bothered with a light waiting for a car or two to turn left on Creeks Edge. Southbound evening traffic is many times stacked up all the way from Brookfield, and this intersection normally sees a lot of stopped cars, and to then have a left yield instead of a dedicated green turn is fucking lunacy. I see so many cars improperly yielding, all the time, because they think that as the light changes they can just turn in front of stalled southbound traffic. This is where I have to keep on guard as these people never, never yield to a bicyclist. Nope -- to improve traffic flow on Franklin, southbounders don't have to stop for other cars trying to turn left here. Too bothersome, I suppose.

Except for last night. A southbounder indeed did stop. Yep, he stopped as he crashed to his death. I'm going to speculate here, but I'd bet my next paycheck that the white Mercedes didn't yield correctly, which is an easy speculation because there isn't much else that could have gone wrong here.

I wonder if this death will help convince traffic engineers to re-install the green turn signal, or will it take a few more fatalities? How many fatalities do you think will be required to trigger a review of this intersection? Three? Five? How many traffic accidents do you think are necessary for an analysis of this intersection? Twelve? Fourteen? I have no idea how these things are done. I'm an engineer, too, but there are some things that engineers do that defy good judgement IMO. My guess is that I won't see any changes to this intersection in my lifetime.

I bicycled past the white ash of the burned out flares, weaved through the small bits of glass, plastic and metal, and as I rode over the oil and antifreeze residue left from the wreck I considered the loss of life that had occurred. In a few days' time the debris will have scattered, the oil and antifreeze will have washed away, and all indications that a fatal wreck had occurred will have vanished. Another commuter lost in time and space, to be replaced by other commuters who will never know what had happened last night at the intersection of Franklin and Creeks Edge...

A Wonderful Life

I've heard references my entire life regarding the movie "It's A Wonderful Life," but I had never seen it until just this last Christmas. I found that the movie, trying to convince me that family and virtue are the true definitions of wealth, really demonstrated a wholly different bend that I see through the lens of a bicyclist and an Elk Grovian social critic -- and one that most people conveniently ignore.

Consider how the despairing Mr. Bailey is shown what Bedford Falls would have been without him. It's renamed Pottersville -- nightmarish and frightening compared to the idyllic small-town of Bedford Falls. George Bailey is returned by his angel to the life he nearly sacrificed, now filled with renewed faith and confidence in life itself.

Yet...have you noticed that Elk Grove is Pottersville? Since 1946 we've watched this classic movie that warms our hearts while we 've spent those ensuing six decades actively destroying the character of worthwhile places to live like Bedford Falls. The movie tries to convince you that small banks and family-run storefronts in quiet small towns are somehow better than gin parlors and pawn shops in Pottersville.

Look around Elk Grove -- filling up with cigarette shops, Asian foot massage parlors, high-speed collector surface roads, payday loan shops, cell phone kiosks, corporate run WalMarts, supermarkets, PetSmarts, giant-monster-mega-banks, strip malls, automalls, oceans of parking, Targets -- we crowd out each other on Black Friday looking to save a buck on imported consumer shit in wretched, lifeless, auto-dependent suburbia then we snuggle together at Christmas to watch a movie extolling the virtues of a modest banker in a walkable, human-scaled friendly small town.

If this isn't situational irony, I don't know what is.

Everyone who bough a housal unit in Elk Grove over the past decade -- you thought that fucking thing would go up 20% per year ad infinitium...didn't you? And when it didn't, you just drove away. Didn't you expect money for nothing? All you had to do was sit there and cash-out refi. Tell me -- were your actions more like Mr. Bailey or Mr. Potter?

When was the last time you engaged a local Elk Grovian business? Not Safeway, not Target, not Kohls, not Bank of America. No, a real, small scaled mom-and-pop business?

How many times last year did you visit Las Vegas, Colusa Casino, Jackson Rancheria, Reno, Red Hawk (kree-ee-ahhh), or Thunder Valley? It's OK for Pottersville but not Elk Grove Bedford Falls?

How many times last year did you visit Showgirls, Hooters, Internet porn sites, Club Fantasy, City Limits, or Gold Club Centerfolds?


Based on our actions, tell me -- what exactly was wrong with Pottersville? It's the same damn environment we built for ourselves, where we live...and Elk Grove is becoming more like it every day. It's fascinating to assume that audiences across America likely take the view that Pottersville had regressed significantly under Potter's helm, much like Biff Tannen and Lyon Estates in 1985 (I never understood this reference until now)...yet we strive to build more of this shit. I personally think Elk Grove specifically and suburbia in general is a waste of human talent and natural resources, but this is among the most minority of positions -- it must be, because more of us live in suburbia than at any other time and we intend to build even more of it once our economy "gets back on track." So -- what, exactly, was wrong with Pottersville?

Indeed, doesn't Pottersville represent progress relative to Bedford Falls? Isn't that what pro-growth, Palin-esque fiscal conservatives want? Their all important metrics of continued economic expansion and single-use development must certainly be more profitable in a Pottersville, no? What's not to like about Elk Grove's Pottersville's prospects for future residential and strip mall development? We've got no trees, no hills, no rocks -- a developer's paradise.


Aren't all of us Elk Grovians following the mantra of individual economic gain over interpersonal relationships? Could you really count on your neighbors during a crisis, real or perceived? Would they count on you? Do you even know their names? Could you borrow a pound of flour if you asked? When you do chat, isn't it always about how far the housing market has crashed? How much you've lost? How far gas prices have risen?

What, do you suppose, are the odds you and all your neighbors would trust an Elk Grovian banker during a run on the bank? Are you fucking kidding me? Trust? Bankers? The most vilified people during our little economic slump? No, you'd be the first to cash out, you'd have to. I'd have to.

There's no definitive end to the movie, is there. No indication of what was to come. Just like there's no definitive end to Elk Grovian suburban sprawl. We just thank God he sent angels to guide us to build more sprawl.

Who Are My Neighbors?

Who are our neighbors?

This Christmas tree, dumped off on the side of Frye Creek not .25 miles from my housal unit, speaks volumes about the people we are. About who our neighbors are. Do you think that whoever did this was a Christian, celebrating Christ's birthday?

Green waste pickup in this neighborhood was Wednesday. Today is Friday, and last night this neighbor of mine ours realized that he'd missed the pickup date. He's clearly a he -- no woman would/could debase herself enough to take her family's pickup truck and dump off a tree in a nearby neighborhood. No -- it's an alpha male jackoff.

This is tree number four -- the fourth abandoned tree I've passed between work and home on my bicycle. One was flocked. Three were the regular old doug firs while one was a nice silvertip.


I can easily surmise what occurred here. Some Elk Grovian felt like he was forced by the wife to buy a tree he didn't want in the first place. Likely mid-30s to early 40s, moustached (as pricks usually are), two, maybe two point five kids he's not all that interested in raising, but hey, he knocked the old lady up and got hitched 'cause it was the right thing to do and the next was just an accident/unplanned/whatever. He doesn't work in Elk Grove, no, 'cause there ain't shit around here for a HVAC installer/SMACNA union worker, but there ain't shit around Sactown these days anyway. Unemployment and credit cards paid for the christmas gifts. Beer? A necessity. A tree? No money, man. Yet the wife kept harassing and harassing and harassing and harassing and harassing and harassing and harassing and harassing and harassing and finally he gave in and climbed into the Tacoma, drove down to Boy Scout Troop #224's treefarm on Franklin and Laguna and plunked down $39 bucks for a goddamn tree.

God had nothing to do with his Christmas, by the way.

Two weeks have since passed since the End of Festivus, and the wife kept harassing and harassing and harassing and harassing and harassing and harassing and harassing and harassing and harassing him to get that damn tree out of the living room and he finally got around to it on a Thursday night 'cause there's no football or NASCAR on, and in a drunken fog decided it'd just be easier to drive the tree out of the neighborhood and dump it alongside a dark, unlit collector road in an adjacent neighborhood (adjacent, lest his wife notice that her tree was the one abandoned).

This is the spirit of Chrismas past...Elk Grove style.

The Man

Only once have I been into a Western Union -- accompanying another student who was getting money orders. I don't ever remember getting a money order myself, but I do remember people who owed me money paying me with them.

I always wondered why don't they just pay with cash? Not that I cared either way, but it seemed to me that there musta been fees associated with these money orders, lost in the transaction.

Today there are more payday loan stores than Starbucks. I mention this as I just discovered a Check Into Cash not two miles away here in the beautiful Laguna sub-suburb of Elk Grove, while I pass three on my bicycle ride into Sacramento along Franklin/Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvds. I suppose it's a good thing to have this store available to us Elk Grovians, for those unfortunate times when unexpected events or bookkeeping errors cause excessive bank fees and overdraft charges to accrue. Better to get a payday loan to avoid those.

That paying ~$20 for a $200 two-week loan is somewhere on the order of 400% APR makes no never mind to us -- at least we avoided that $39 overdraft fee from Wells Fargo! We pulled the wool over The Man!

Speaking of The Man -- my brother-in-law once called me The Man. He said I didn't mean to be, I just was. Because I'm white and I work for the electric utility, I'm Part of The Man. Yes. I admit it. I've got my boot on the neck of the working brown man, who's only tryin' to pay his bills, and I'm out there makin' it harder for them. Rates are only going up, up up! What, to pay my bloated salary? Of course! I'm The Man.

And obviously every owner of a Check Into Cash franchise must also be, too.

Gotta Getta Guna

I don't often travel along Laguna Boulevard Freeway, but last night I drove by one of the original strip malls in this city, at the intersection of DiLusso. The Taco Bell is humming, the auto parts store looked busy, yes, but the ancillary storefronts had little activity and have long been difficult to secure long term tenants. There is always a vacancy or three.

There was an original Guna Juice at that strip mall; indeed, in the fifteen years I've been here, that was the only business I patronized among all those secondary storefronts. It was owned by a guy who made fresh juices/smoothies, and what I really liked about it was that I could get an apple/ginger juice which was fantastic. Indeed, you could order any combination of things because he was an independent owner and was willing to provide a degree of customer service, something missing elsewheres.

I remember the day he was pulling out -- I happened into the joint that morning as he was ripping out the equipment, now some nine years ago. He had another store in East Elk Grove, and told me how the rents/leases were increasing so fast he couldn't stay in Laguna. He was clearly dejected but also optimistic that his other store would survive. He asked if I would patronize his other store.

I never once did...it was too far away, and why would/should I travel another eight miles by car just for a juice? If this city built up on a medium/high density format perhaps it'd be easier to get there, perhaps there'd be other destinations near his other shop that would provide for a multiple destination trip. But not here in the land of the single use. His clientele is fixed -- only a fixed number of low density housal unit occupants near his store can/will find him.

Today, that little strip mall houses two high class occupants -- Laguna Cigarettes and a Check Into Cash -- both of which portend where this fucking city is headed.

Forecast 2011

Another round of Monologuonian forecasts, yes? Yet another year of failed predictions? You got it.

I called 2010 as a year of crisis, not of complacency, and no one would argue that I missed this one completely. I had assumed at the start of twenty ten, following a twenty 'o nine of complacency that we'd arrive to the realization that our nation is broke, our state governments are broke, our municipal governments are broke, and our consumers are even more broke, and that somehow this would manifest in some rather unpleasant outcomes. Alas, we were able to avoid all that through quantitative easing and other accounting chicanery at the state level, with the obvious consequence that we are another two trillion in the hole.

I also missed, by a long shot, a rising dollar and falling commodities due to the machinations of deflation.

I'm just a blogger, really; there ain't anything special about my ability/inability to forecast. I have no access to data other than hunch and guesses to guide me, so with that in mind, here's my projections for twenty eleven:

We will have surpassed the sixteen trillion ($16,000,000,000,000) mark on the federal deficit by year's end, and we will collectively care as much about this as we ever have -- which is, not in the least. We'll see Obama, who as a senator in March of 2006 voted against increasing then then debt ceiling, raise it several billion more as president lest we be forced to default on our debt obligations. We'll not hear him repeat his then-argument that "Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children..." We oft hear how we are supposed to "help" our children, "save" our children, "care" for our children. Know what we're actually saying? Fuck the children! Our parents said the same thing about their public debts passed on to us and we turned out to be even better consumers on borrowed monies than they were. The debt will mean nothing to anyone. In 2011, ask anyone you know what the national debt is, and you'll have one chance in six that they'll be right to within $1,000,000,000,000.

Oil will stay relatively pricey, and by the start of the summer driving season (yeah, we annotate a time of year dedicated to the consumption of ever more foreign oil) the price of a gallon of gasoline will again be on the collective minds of consumers. We'll devote an increasingly disproportionate level of media attention to the thirty odd thousand electric cars sold to uber-wealthy so-called conservationists in San Diego and San Francisco and ignore the other eleven odd million gasoline powered vehicle sales and the fact that we will have gone from 51% of oil from foreign sources to something greater, against the forecasts from our own government that projects a percentage drop to ~45% by 2035. We will only be more dependent on external energy by the end of this year, not less.

Do I call for a chaotic 2011? Remember, the American project can only aspire for two conditions -- crisis and complacency. We cannot fall in the middle. We cannot engage the long term, neither on a national level nor on a personal level. We have no situational awareness of anything beyond the next paycheck or beyond the next quarter. Financial bubbles are built based on this condition, and burst by their inherent instabilities. The herd mentality of Americans, following Dancing With The Stars and NASCAR, cannot save for their futures. Only the first buffaloes can see the cliff coming, but by then the momentum of the herd behind them forces them all off the cliff. Although I was quite wrong about 2010 being labeled a crisis year, I will not call for 2011 to be. I base this on the subjectiveness of a 2011 that won't rebound from the recession that has, of course, long ago ended. I see stagnant wages, unemployment that will remain within 0.4% of what it is this morning based on the re-re-re-re-re-extension of benefits which allows said unemployed to continue to follow their American Idols or Dancing Stars. Those who do find jobs? 2011 will show another marked increase in service sector, large format retail and "drinking places" employment, while real jobs that carry a nation continue to be lost. Manufacturing as a percentage of employment will be less on Jan 1, 2012 than today. We won't really address our public debts, and as a consequence we'll realize that the services we demand cannot actually be paid for, but we won't revolt. No not in our Prozac nation glued to their blackberries, laptops and twitter accounts. We don't have the balls or the desire to mount any reformation. Gulf oil spills couldn't deter anyone from gassing up the Pacer for a trip to the mall on Black Friday. I am now of the opinion that the conditions for a crisis year will rest upon a foundation of several complacent ones. We are probably not there yet.

Consequently, I see Afghanistan virtually ignored again by our nation in 2011, and I'm calling for an increase in our presence there. Meh. The NFL playoffs are about to begin, while ground zero mosques, marijuana legalization, flag lapel pins and the rights of gays (don't ask, don't tell) are going to again consume a fair share of our collective energies. Our war will go unnoticed.

Global warming? Won't be at all an issue in 2011. Ignored, too. "Green shoots" of the economic variety are more headline worthy than the environmental sort.

Our economy will remain flummoxed under more quantitative easing, more useless discussions on financial executive compensation, and will rely less on real productive activity. The Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) economy sectors will simply find other way and means to extract wealth from actual production and will continue to hold an impressive swath of our GDP. Target and WalMart will enjoy an increasing percentage of the retail sector.

I don't see 2011 as a year with any appreciable Middle East flare ups, Latin American debt defaults, North Korean nuclear assaults, Saudi Arabian leadership disputes, African nation peace treaties, fewer Northern Mexican beheadings, or European Euro-zone crises. Sure, varying degree of chaos will inevitably occur this year but it won't be out of the ordinary, and if so, will be completely ignored by Americans. Remember, Daytona is fewer than fifty days away!



I know that 2011 will be a pivotal year for me personally as I will have extinguished my mortgage. This should only happen once in my lifetime. I should hope that I don't find the need to ever mortgage another housal unit even as I move on, as I hope to (gasp!) have some savings to support any increasing real estate venture. I should hope that I continue my commitment to economic frugality and to always live within my means, and I would hope that an increasing number in my nation can find the wherewithal to do the same. If we can do this personally we might strive to develop governments with the same outlook. It does, however, require a long term vision...something in rather short supply. Will 2011 be a year where Jerry Brown and the state legislature will actually tackle runaway state deficits? I give him low odds, unfortunately, as I do for all the other governmental bodies that represent me. I see 2011 just as polarizing, with a government that cannot govern effectively due to the 50/50 split that pervades both the population and the legislative process. With no meaningful reforms born in 2011, this will indeed feed our complacency.

There you have it. Vague, nebulous predictions for 2011. Here's my wish for you to have a fine 2011 and to find solutions (they are abound) to all the challanges, like spelling, that lay before us.

Self Gratification

Based on my own actions in my pantry/refrigerator this morning, I am beginning to gel on an understanding why a full third of our nation's population is technically obese.

For a long time I believed the explosion in obesity since 1985 had to be caused by the food we consume (remember, we're consumers first and people second, so we don't eat food, we consume it). Indeed, I still think this is a rather important component...but I've also come to believe that it is likely more cultural than I originally thought -- it is due to our increasing desire for instant self-gratification.

I am not immune to waist management; as a type I diabetic I struggle with the balance between food and insulin and insulin too often wins the battle, resulting in a lifelong fight to keep my health/weight in check. Nonetheless, this morning I made an instant decision to eat some cookies on the counter as they were right there -- instant, no effort involved in preparation. My longtime mantra of "all food eaten ought to have been prepared by you" fell short. I now believe that if we all followed this mantra, virtually no one would be overweight.

It is as much an issue with processed foods as it is with the (near) instant gratification a frozen pizza provides. When you don't have any involvement in the food you consume you also have little in the way of patience and willingness to wait until a communal meal, if these even exist anymore. Cupholders in cars. Foods designed to be eaten with one hand. These are the culprits, not necessarily the foods themselves.

It is against this backdrop on a nation calorically rich yet starved for nutrition that a person can approach two hundred and fifty eight pounds on light beer, chicken fingers and cigarettes and before the age of sixty requires a reconstructive knee and a stent or three. The knee is restored, the heart capable of a few billion more beats, yet the underlying causes go unsolved and because of the knee the person "can't exercise" and because of the stents "can't exert herself" and so applies for a state handicap placard so she can more easily pull into the closest stall at the discounted cigarette store.

A more correct approach would be healthcare designed to stop the smoking, to encourage the loss of fifty eight pounds, and to correct the other issues that makes the "patient" believe that exercise on an artificial hip/knee is fraught with danger.

No, instead, her "health" insurance covers the $42,358 knee surgery, the $23,040 angiogram/angioplasty employing two $334,000 surgeons while ignoring the underlying causes. Yet her health is not improved, only life prolonged. Think of the care that could be afforded this woman if instead of these two surgeons a team of twelve $55,600 "real" health care practitioners were able to convince her the value in losing weight, stopping alcohol/tobacco/prescription drug abuse, etc.

That's, of course, an impossible conclusion in our society, one driven by the inability of our citizens to recognize the long term value in twenty minutes of daily exercise, in the time it takes for their own food preparation, and the loss of the immense profits the healthcare system reaps from heart surgeries, cancer drugs, MRIs, hip replacements, prescription narcotics, on and on. It is why we spend a fifth of our entire nation's productive output on healthcare (and increasing) on a population whose health is already marginal (and decreasing).

I do not hold any illusions that our nation's consumers will ever take to the harder, time-tested and sustainable "health" care practices of correct eating and exercising. I can't see it because I can't even follow it.